Aitiip
Project Partner
Leyre Hernández
Project manager
Eva Sanchis
C&D Responsible
Description of Aitiip
Aitiip Technology Centre, based in Zaragoza, Spain, is a leading R&D hub specializing in advanced materials, additive manufacturing, and sustainable industrial solutions. With over 25 years of experience, Aitiip supports sectors like automotive, aeronautics, packaging, and renewable energy through cutting-edge technologies in 3D printing, robotics, and plastic processing. It offers services in design, engineering, prototyping, and industrialization, and coordinates numerous European innovation projects. As a private foundation backed by major companies in the plastics sector, Aitiip promotes circular economy, eco-design, and digital transformation, aiming to drive the green and digital transition across industries.
What is your task in the project LIGNOFUN?
Aitiip is aiming in this project to consolidate the chemical processes developed and demonstrate their potential to generate real solutions by up-scaling the chemical modifications from the lab to 20 L reactor processes.
Aitiip will translate bench‑scale depolymerisation outcomes into stable, scalable process conditions, deliver pilot‑scale batches of lignin‑derived intermediates, and feed them to the consortium’s demonstrators. This enables validation across chemicals, composites, adhesives, rubber, wood panels and cosmetics/personal care applications foreseen by the project.
Operationally, their contribution sits in process scale‑up and support to demonstration/communication), ensuring materials and data flow efficiently along the value chains the project will test and validate.
Role, Relevance & Interfaces in the Project
- Feedstock variability: aligning process parameters with the natural variability of lignin streams to keep quality within specs at scale.
- Scaleup fidelity: reproducing reaction performance (selectivity, yield, impurity profile) when moving from lab glassware to ~20 L reactors.
- Solvent and energy management: achieving safe, efficient solvent recovery and minimizing energy intensity during larger runs.
- Interface with demonstrators: meeting tight specifications and timelines so downstream partners can validate in different applications without bottlenecks.
- Documentation & compliance: generating robust data packages for sustainability/safety assessments and exploitation.
Without reliable process scaleup, highquality intermediates cannot reach demonstration lines, and the value chains LIGNOFUN aims to prove would stall. By derisking chemistry at pilot scale, we unlock validation in multiple sectors (from composites and adhesives to cosmetics), which is essential to reduce reliance on fossil aromatics and advance the circular bioeconomy ambitions of the project.
Contact us
Aitiip Centro Tecnológico
Calle del Romero 12, 50720, Zaragoza (Aragón)
Funded
The project is supported by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking and its members. Funded by the European Union. GA ID 101214432. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CBE JU. Neither the European Union nor the CBE JU can be held responsible for them.